The Howard League for Penal Reform

How can we best keep girls out of the penal system

The Howard League is supporting an inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in Prison looking at how we can best keep girls out of the penal system. Our third hearing, attended by eight peers and MPs, had a presentation and discussion with John Fassenfelt, the chair of the Magistrates’ Association, and it brought up some really interesting stuff.

He said that the youth courts can only deal with the administration of justice, and their responsibilities and powers in relation to child protection and family welfare are nugatory. Some twenty years ago the courts dealing with children combined both responsibilities, of course there were serious problems when some courts were more enthusiastic in their punitive role than the welfare role, but at least the child was seen in the whole. John Fassenfelt gave an example of a girl who appeared before him in the youth court. She was 14 years old and facing charges of theft. Her mother was a drug addict, had an alcohol dependency and worked as a prostitute. No one came to court with the girl. He deferred the case and at the next court hearing an “uncle” came to court with the girl. The magistrates had no authority to refer the case to the family court or to the local authority children’s services and so she was given a community sentence instead.

A second recommendation was to keep all but murder cases in the youth court as, particularly for young girls, the crown court is not an appropriate environment for children.

Something that came up in several of the presentations was the lack of focus on young girls as the system deals primarily with boys. The crimes that young girls commit are different to boys and their needs are different, so the response should be different. It is not, for example, appropriate or safe to put one girl into a group activity with boys.

The centralisation of courts alongside a cost-cutting court closure programme has meant that youth courts now sit miles away from the areas the young people live in and come from. A child may be expected to get themself to court using two or three buses that takes a couple of hours and costs money they don’t have. So they don’t turn up. The court then issues an arrest warrant and the child is held in police cells overnight until their court appearance.

Overall the parliamentarians heard about a system that fails to take account of child protection or child welfare and lacks co-ordination. It appears that local children’s services might prefer not to know about some of the vulnerable young teenagers and hand them over to the justice system because they are too much trouble and too expensive.

January 25, 2012 · Frances Crook · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Sentencing

Local council services for families and children

I spoke at a Labour Party meeting in Islington South on Wednesday night. This was on behalf of the Howard League and not a partisan act, and the Howard League is pleased to send speakers to faith groups, universities, political party events and anywhere people gather to discuss penal policy. I was interested in what one of the other speakers had to say about what was happening locally because it highlights challenges for local government across the country.

Councillor Richard Watts is the executive member for children and families, which means he is responsible for Islington council’s policies on early years and children’s centres; schools; play and youth services; children’s social services, and tackling child poverty.

He said that Islington estimated that there are 1,000 families locally who have more than seven of the indicators that trigger specialist support. The families identified for this service will have a continuum of needs which will include parenting risk factors such as:

  • living on a low income (on benefit, tax credit and/or in a workless household)
  • in rent arrears or debt or living in overcrowded accommodation
  • homeless or in temporary accommodation
  • a family member is in prison or in contact with probation or the youth justice system or in regular contact with the police
  • there is domestic violence
  • living in overcrowded accommodation or in temporary accommodation
  • where children’s attendance at school is below 80%
  • where children or young people are involved in anti-social behaviour in their local are – e.g. at risk of an ABC or above
  • where a family member is experiencing anxiety or depression or a more enduring and serious mental illness
  • where a parent has a learning disability
  • where a family member has a substance misuse problem
  • where there are concerns about parenting
  • where the family has had a specialist service (like child protection, youth offending or a specialist mental health service) and needs on-going practical support at a lower level in the community: a ‘Step Down’ service
  • Where a family member has been discharged from hospital or custody.

The children are likely to be affected through parenting difficulties and to be:

  • poor school attenders and repeated excludees from school
  • prone to anti-social behaviour and offending
  • experiencing social, emotional and behavioural problems
  • substance misusing, and or teenage parents.

He admitted that families have not always received co-ordinated support from services, not just in Islington but in most local authorities, and to that extent some of the criticisms of the national government are correct. But the loss of a huge portion of local authority budgets are going to hit the services for families who need support the hardest.

I was heartened to hear that Islington is protecting its youth services and the budget will be maintained in the next couple of years. It is also preparing to pool budgets with the NHS locally to provide a wrap-around service to families in need, although this will obviously only be short term as the local primary care trust is about to be abolished with reorganisation of the NHS.

Some areas are experimenting with “justice reinvestment” which means diverting money that would have been spent on criminal justice and prisons into local support for families and children. This must be the way forward.

January 20, 2012 · Frances Crook · No Comments
Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy

Community sentences are a good thing in themselves

I did an interview this morning on BBC Radio Merseyside about the bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones’s series of programmes on Radio 4 when he has been saying that too many people are being sent to prison. I agree with him on that. He has been visiting prisons and is quoted as saying that it was time to question whether prisons should be “warehouses to store the incorrigible” or “greenhouses to restore the redeemable”. He says that a large number of people currently being sent to prison could instead be involved in community payback schemes.

On one of his themes I am less convinced, and strangely it is because I think there is a moral imperative behind community sentences that he seems to be ignoring. The bishop argues that community payback should be a punishment and people have to wear high visibility jackets so that other people can see the punishment happening. He also argues that this sort of public humiliation is a deterrent to other people who wouldn’t like to be seen in that position. I do not think that public humiliation or targeting of people is either morally appropriate or practically effective.

Community sentences are a good thing in themselves. It is right and proper that someone who has done something wrong should make some amends. That action should be proportionate and constructive. It should not be a punishment or negative experience. All the research into restorative justice (the most over-researched and under-utilised sanction) shows that it is most effective when it is at its most restorative and least punitive.

We expect too much of criminal justice interventions if we expect them to change lives. It is drug and alcohol rehabilitation services or positive relationships that can turn someone away from anti-social behaviour.

Should we not see a criminal justice response to a crime as simply that, a response. Someone has done something bad and so we are going to ask them to do something good.

Governments have struggled for years, centuries, to get sanctions to work but all the evidence shows that they have little impact and can often make things much worse.

This is not an argument for doing nothing, but for doing something different. Prison should be reserved for people who have done really serious things and are a continuing danger. Everyone else should be asked to make some positive recompense.

If they need drug, alcohol rehab or mental health treatment, housing or job training, then that should be provided, but just the same as everyone else gets.

My argument is for a new moral basis to the criminal justice system that also puts limits on it and a public discourse that is honest about its limitations.

So the bishop is right about prisons but wrong about community sentences.

January 10, 2012 · Frances Crook · No Comments
Posted in: Uncategorized

The value of education

I visited a prison holding men serving long, very long, sentences just before the holidays and was told about impending cuts to its education budget. These men have little opportunities to work, partly because of the high security nature of the prison and partly because the prison simply doesn’t have the facilities, so education is crucially important.

Education for prisoners is something worthwhile to do all day. It can literally be a lifeline for a man serving 25 years. The education offered in prisons can vary from skill training to higher levels of academic study. The budget for education in prisons has traditionally been divided up amongst prisons, although the contracts for delivering the service have been centrally controlled.

All this is about to change. The money for education in prisons is going to be frontloaded so that it is aimed specifically at people about to re-enter the community. That is all very well, but it is taking money away from long termers who will be left with nothing to do all day for decades.

Interestingly, I don’t think it will affect the private prisons, whose contracts are agreed for years to come. So prisoners serving longer sentences held in private prisons will be able to have access to education whereas similar prisoners in state prisons won’t.

As a former teacher, and a natural pedagogue, I am enthusiastic about the value of education and committed to the principle of life-long learning, for all citizens.

January 5, 2012 · Frances Crook · No Comments
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The whole life tariff and its challenges

Ian Brady has won his chance to have his request to be transferred to a prison heard in open court. He has been in Ashworth high security mental hospital for many, many years and has been force fed since he started refusing food in an attempt to take his own life. He can be force fed in a mental hospital, he can’t be force fed in a prison. Therefore, if he succeeds in his request to be transferred to a prison, he will be able to starve himself to death.

There are about 35 men and one woman who are serving “whole life tariffs” who have been told by the home secretary that they will never be released from custody. Most of these people were convicted of killing members of their own family or people known to them and have killed more than once.

The whole life tariff brings with it moral, political and practical challenges. This is difficult to discuss, but that makes it even more important.

As a matter of principle I am not opposed to the idea that a few people have proved themselves so incredibly dangerous that they will have to spend pretty much the rest of their life in some sort of custody in order to protect the rest of us, but there are certain parameters that should guide when we do this and how.

The benchmark should be very high, so that only people who have committed several murders, probably on different occasions rather than an outburst within a family that results in more than one death, should be considered for a whole life tariff.

The strict criteria should be applied by a court, not by a politician. It would be reprehensible if justice was led by a red-top lynch mob. The home secretary, or justice secretary, should not have the power to set individual sentences. Of course politicians and parliament lay out the framework through legislation, but the individual case must be decided in a court of law. Sentencing should be free and independent of public opinion. Lord Justice Leveson insisted, when giving evidence to the justice select committee on 13 December with regard to the sentencing for offences committed during the riots in August, that political pronouncements shouldn’t drive a single sentence.

There should be an independent review process which could be carried out by the parole board. I would hope to see some compassion exercised towards the end of life so that people who have spent many years in custody can return to family, if they have any, to die, when they are no longer a risk to others. However, it must be appreciated that estimating how long people will survive when they have been diagnosed with a terminal illness is not an exact science and that prison shortens lives, with the result that people may survive longer than anticipated when they are released.

My last point is a practical one. People who have no hope of ever being released from custody present management problems for prisons, or mental hospitals. They may have a sense that they have nothing to lose and can be violent, they may be suicidal, they may just be hopeless. It is therefore a challenge to institutions to develop tailored plans for such people in order to make life bearable for them, for fellow prisoners and for staff.

December 15, 2011 · Frances Crook · One Comment
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The Government forgets about VAT

It is not often that a penal reform charity takes a close look at the tax system, but work by the Howard League reveals that the government has been dissembling about the true costs of purchasing from private providers.

In simple terms, the ministry of justice and the youth justice board when it pays for children to be incarcerated in the commercial child jails, has not included VAT in the costs in public statements. VAT is payable but in Parliamentary statements, Parliamentary Questions, accounts and speeches, the government states the costs without adding the VAT.

For children this is of particular concern as the youth justice board has been responsible for closing secure children’s homes because it claims they are too expensive. But VAT is not payable on places for children in small local authority run secure children’s homes. VAT must be paid on the privately run secure training centres. When VAT is taken into account, the cost variance narrows.

The Howard League asked Lisa Nandy MP to table a parliamentary question that was answered on Monday, which revealed the true costs: the cost per place in a secure children’s homes is £211,000 a year, the cost per place in a privately run secure training centre is £203,000. It had always been claimed that the cost of a place in a secure training centre was £163,000 but this was without the VAT.

The difference in the level of care between a secure children’s home and a commercial child jail is huge. Local authority run children’s homes are expertly staffed and safe. Two children have died in the commercial secure training centres, linked directly to the use of physical restraint. Yet the YJB has been doggedly closing the safe houses and pushing more children into the commercial jails, ostensibly because they are cheaper. The Howard League has now found this is simply not tenable.

Whilst it could be argued that the tax is returned to the Treasury’s coffers, this is still a cost to the youth justice board’s budget. This revelation has significant budgetary implications and raises questions as to why the youth justice board has undertaken a decade of decommissioning of secure children’s homes.

Furthermore, the privately run prison that holds 360 teenage boys and is part of the prison system, is also affected by this VAT sleight of hand, making it considerably more expensive for the ministry of justice. The drain on the budgets of non-departmental public bodies like the youth justice board and on individual ministries could be 20% higher than has previously been admitted. The government raised the VAT rate from 17.5% to 20% on 4 January 2011, at a stroke increasing the costs of commercial prison places for adults and children.

This issue has vast implications for the government’s rehabilitation revolution. It pays VAT on all private services. What does this mean for the programme of privatisation of public sector prisons? Or how payment by results are measured? Or the potential privatisation of probation services?

If the government wants justice to work, it has to be honest about what it costs. In the interim, the case has never been stronger to withdraw immediately from the failing secure training centres. There is no financial argument that the safety of children cannot be put first.

December 13, 2011 · Frances Crook · 2 Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Prisons, Uncategorized

Charities and prisons

I think I have made my views about charities running prisons pretty clear – I don’t think it is charitable to run institutions that are there to punish people. But there is an interesting grey area when charities are providing services to commercially run prisons, for free.

Hundreds, indeed probably thousands, of voluntary groups and charities carry out an array of services inside prisons in a voluntary capacity. There are people helping prisoners to learn to read, to record stories for their children, making cups of tea during visits and running crèches. The list is huge and includes all prisons. The gift of time and expertise and compassion by individuals and organisations across the country to prisoners is a wondrous thing in itself. This effort helps make prisons safer places, supports families and in the end, contributes to a safer society.

In addition, voluntary groups and charities provide services under contract to prisons and are paid for doing this. This is a positively healthy relationship and often charities experiment with new ideas and better ways of doing things. The charitable sector is creative and can often move more quickly than statutory services. The motives of staff working for charities are usually benign and enhance the quality of the service – the reason why people do things affects the way they do them.

But, what about charities that provide free services to prisons that are run by huge international corporations that are in it for the money? Why should grant giving trusts or the public donate to a charity so that it can run a visitors’ centre or children’s crèche in a prison that is owned by G4S or Serco? Is this getting charitable money to fill the coffers of the super-commercial firms that are already making a huge profit?

It is a very difficult issue for groups who have been working inside state prisons for years when they are sold off to the private companies. The companies have not included provision for paying for services that they assume will continue to be provided for free. So this leaves the charities to pull the plug and leave the prisoners and their families without support, or battle the big guys for a pittance to carry on working.

Interesting I don’t think it has been an issue considered by the big grant giving trusts, and I was talking to a leading person in one of the biggest ones yesterday. It will be considered now.

December 8, 2011 · Frances Crook · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Prisons

Grendon: a unique prison

Grendon prison is unique in our system. The whole prison is run using therapeutic principles and takes long-term prisoners with personality disorders, some of whom have previously been disruptive. It was set up 50 years ago and has miraculously survived the vicissitudes of penal politics and changes in prison service structure.

The prison inspectorate published today (1 December 2011) a report of an unannounced visit. The prison holds just over 200 adult men and they are housed in five separate communities. It is run in a completely different way to all other prisons, with staff and elected prisoners running group therapy sessions that challenge prisoners’ offending and institutional behaviour. The concept is of a democratic therapeutic community.

The prison has faced particular challenges this year with two deaths, one a suicide and one an alleged homicide.  In addition, Grendon has not been protected from the budget cuts and consequent curtailing of regime and time out of cell.  These cuts put an even greater stress on a prison that has run on consent and engagement than they do on even an ordinary prison.

Prisoners have to volunteer to go to Grendon, although it is a category B secure prison. They stay in units for 40 or so prisoners. A therapeutic process has evolved based on regular meetings of each community and of smaller, eight strong, groups. Men stay at Grendon for at least 18 months, so membership of the small groups tends to be stable, and contributes to genuine disclosure and what the prison calls “psychodynamic working through”.

The Prison Service told the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2005 that the interaction between prisoners in the groups worked like this:

“Small groups go through historical exploration, clarification and reconstruction; the sharing and catharsis of trauma in a situation where trust and genuine intimacy begins to develop; interpretation and challenge of unconscious drives and wishes, and the recognition of the re-enactment of previous situations and difficulties. The work in groups is amplified by the therapeutic community environment, providing each prisoner with forty ‘therapists’—fellow prisoners who are able to challenge and ferret out evasions and disassembling by the client with tenacity and vigour that far surpasses what the facilitators can muster—as the prisoners say ‘you can’t con a con’.”

The prison has been extensively evaluated and the proven reduction in reoffending is between one fifth and one quarter. Remembering that the prison contains some of the most serious offenders with what are considered intractable problems in any other setting, this is a remarkable achievement. But perhaps the most amazing feat is its sheer survival, and long may it continue.

December 1, 2011 · Frances Crook · No Comments
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Hertfordshire police are putting an end to crime

I spent a morning last week with Hertfordshire police and a local MP, James Clappison, to find out about the scheme they run with prolific offenders.

The police target the most prolific but not those involved in violence, so mostly burglars and the like. These men, and occasional women, have spent half their lives in jail with an average of nine prison sentences and numerous community sentences behind them. They had collectively spent 284 years in prison through 304 separate sentences.

The first question the police ask is: do you want to stop? What happens next is revolutionary, and, surprisingly effective. The police estimate that each person is committing an average of 112 burglaries a year. The aim is to put a stop to this, not just interrupt it which is what prison has been doing.

The first thing the men and women have to do is admit to their crimes. 60 people admitted to 7,350 offences of burglary, car crime, theft and other non-violent offences, often linked to chaotic drug and alcohol abuse.

The police are working with the local court. The person stays in police custody for a few days and the police call the cells a place of sanctuary, to get away from family and other links that push people into crime. One example was 44 year old Michael who was taught to rob jewellery shops by his grandfather and had been in and out of custody since childhood.

People are remanded by the court to a training prison – because unlike local jails they have resettlement wings and can ready people to go back into the community. The short period of remand is seen as the transition.

The court sentences them for their offences, everything they have admitted to, which can be considerable. The sentence is deferred for six months and at the same time they are given a three year community sentence. They are given intensive support to change their lives. They have to go back to court every single month and are seen by the same judge who asks them about their progress. This is very similar to the experiments in court-led desistance in both New York’s Red Hook court and the Liverpool community court, and is almost the opposite of an ordinary court. The police use GPS to track people. They get tailor made support, not a ready made programme. The support can include housing, help with the day to day bureaucracy of life, mentors, basically whatever they need. I was particularly struck with this, as too often people are squashed into ready made programmes that are irrelevant or just designed to make money for the private provider.

The police stress that the real difference is that people have to admit to what they have done and are offered redemption, not punishment.

Although the scheme has not undergone a formal academic evaluation, the outcomes based on crime rates do seem to be significant. The police say their crime statistics are showing real reductions. However, it does not have the support of NOMS because it is outside the sentencing guidelines.

November 29, 2011 · Frances Crook · 3 Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Government policy, Probation, Uncategorized

Prison closures in Texas and justice reinvestment

Ian Birrell, former speech writer for David Cameron, has written in today’s Guardian about how Texas is closing prisons and redirecting funding towards drug services, housing for former prisoners and other community programmes to help turn round lives. Texas is one of many states that is moving towards decarceration, mostly in response to spiralling costs that are becoming unsustainable. The Howard League’s Commission on English Prisons Today examined this phenomenon a couple of years ago.

This is great news. It certainly sets a challenge to our right wing and centrist politicians, particularly as we too are facing a period of fiscal austerity. However, the lessons are not that simply transferrable. In the USA there is no NHS, so taking money from prisons and putting it into health services is not something we need to do. The services are, or should be, available, and arguably it would not be appropriate to put additional monies into health services specifically for people who have committed offences. My view has always been that people who do wrong should face a response proportionate to the action, but should not trigger intensive intervention to try and sort out their whole lives. The criminal justice system should not become a health service.

So how could justice reinvestment work here? We have a much more exciting prospect. We could release funding that is today locked in the bricks and mortar of prisons into neighbourhoods and use it to make them safer by preventing crime and, at the same time, make them better places to live. Prison money could both manage people who have committed crimes in their local areas safely, and, could be invested in neighbourhoods to carry out many schemes nominated by local people.

Prison money would be better spent on parks, things for young people to do, literacy classes in the community, teaching people Latin – oh not that really, but you get my drift. Let’s give the money to local authorities to spend in neighbourhoods where the prisoners come from.

So while I am pleased for the people of Texas who will be safer because of the closure of prisons, I think we can do better.

November 21, 2011 · Frances Crook · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: International, Prisons